At their meeting in the Mekong Delta city, Hieu briefed his guest on Can Tho’s favourable conditions for regional economic connectivity, and expressed his belief that joint efforts by the two localities will create large-scale projects and programmes.

He called on Japanese firms to come to scope out the local investment environment, and inject capital into the manufacturing and processing industry there.

The official suggested Hanazumi encourage Japanese investors to join projects on production, processing, and provision of agricultural export services at the Mekong Delta centre for agricultural product linkage, production, processing and consumption based in Can Tho city.

According to Hieu, the city is also calling for investments in supporting industries, processing-manufacturing, high technology, smart technology, and logistics, along with information-technology projects.

Hanazumi expressed his confidence in the good relations between Vietnam and Japan at both national and local levels as Japan’s Hyogo prefecture, and Okayama and Nasushiobara cities have set up cooperative ties with Can Tho.

According to the Can Tho Department of Foreign Affairs, Japanese firms are running eight projects in the city with total registered capital of about 1.35 billion USD, mainly in manufacturing-processing, information-technology, and electricity.

In the first six months of this year, Can Tho exported 80.72 million USD worth of goods to Japan, and imported 25.45 million USD worth of product from the East Asian country.